Movie Nation

A body can go months at a time without seeing a crime thriller that DOESN’T have an obligatory “strip club scene” where a malefactor hangs out, where the cops, a detective or a relative of a missing person goes to “get some answers” about a mystery.

One theory about why this is might be that these scenes are for the creeper producers who like to gawk and hit on the actresses and dancers who are cast in such scenes, or who hope to be cast.

The Hollywood movies about strippers include the ludicrous, pervy fantasy “Showgirls,” Demi’s “Striptease,” and a lot tales of the sordid, dangerous life led by those who go into that work.

But a French strip club movie? That would have to be an alotogether different thing. They must have “unions” over there. And workman’s comp. And all of the women are, you know, French.

“My Sole Desire” is a French drama about a novice in the trade, her awkward baptism by fire, the icky initiations of “private dance” parlours and the private bookings that take this “exotic dancer” trade into the realm of The World’s Oldest Profession.

The basement strip club named “À mon seul désir” (“My Sole Desire”) is a strange place for grad student Manon (Louise Chevillotte) to turn up. But here she is, looking for work.

The manager and guy who watches the door (Pedro Casablanc) raises an eyebrow, answers her “I’d like to try out” (in French with English subtitles) with a blunt warning to her and to the viewer.

This is “an erotic theater,” he grumps. It’s “not like in the movies.”

He lets her in, for free, just to see what she’s considering as a job. Everything about the show is down-market. The club has near-bare-walls decor, and is intimate to the point of tiny, with a clientele of regulars, pervy one-visit-and-banned types, and the curious.

“Not all clients are pigs” is hardly re-assuring.

The base pay is poor, dependant on tips and private “parlour” sessions to make it a living wage.

Manon takes in the stripteases, the stripper who deconstructs striptease as an art form, the duets and menage a trois acts. She has questions backstage.

But she is young and lithe and willing. If she can avoid crossing swords with the resident “young” (ballerina and perhaps schoolgirl uniform) act, the aloof Sati (Yuliya Abiss), perhaps Manon — taking the stage name “Aurora” from “Sleeping Beauty” — can get the hang of things. And if she can, Pablo the manager assures her, she’ll always be “in charge.”

The dressing room is filled with French variations on stripper archetypes — battle worn, sisterly and supportive and those figuring on doing this until they can start their real lives with marriage or a place at the Paris Conservatory acting school.

That would be Mia (Zita Hanrot), Aurora’s mentor, friend and eventually her lover.

Because whatever sexual charge Manon got from walking into that joint and shaking her money maker had its roots in a general disappointment in “love” and “men” and conventionality.

Mia’s acting dreams and professional status are in conflict. Nobody who can show off her moves on a pole — on a moving subway car — is likely to give all that up for work as an extra on some crummy movie, or life as a full-time acting student.

As their affair, triggered by their sexy teamwork onstage, deepens and the complications of Mia’s life come out, Aurora/Manon finds herself going further down the rabbit hole with ex-colleague Elody (Laure Giappiconi), who arranges private party appearances that devolve quickly and unsurprisingly into actual sex work.

Aurora will ignore Pablo the manager’s “rules” and warning number one — “No sex. Your mouth is gold, got it?” But will she, as the expression goes, “f— around and find out?”

There are a few things I really appreciated about “Suncoast,” writer-director Laura Chinn’s memoirish remembrance of the slow, wasting death of a sibling.

Characters live through story arcs, reminding us of the hope that even the most lost among us can change.

Characters transcend the “types” that the movie sets them up to be. Yes, teenage girls can be mean, shallow and and vapid. But nobody is merely their worst traits, which for teens are almost certainly temporary.

The performances have a wonderful sensitivity, with Laura Linney at her brittle best, Woody Harrelson at his warmest playing a very controversial type of activist and nepo baby Nico Parker (the spitting image of mom Thandiwie Newton) holding her own with them playing a teen who comes of age in a trying, testing and touching way.

And it’s a movie of consequence, revisiting the “Right to Die” culture wars of the early 2000s. Set in Florida, it’s a tale of learning ethics and morality and personal responsibility and has as its backdrop the infamous Terri Schiavo case, politicized by fanatical activists and opportunistic Governor Jeb “Please Clap” Bush.

Doris (Parker) is a seventeen year-old with big responsibilities. She’s the one who wheels her older brother about and cares for him when Mom (Linney) isn’t around.

Max is not quite vegetative, but he’s uncommunicative and has been for quite some time. And as we meet this family in their little pink cinderblock bungalow, it’s time to put Max in Suncoast hospice.

Mom doesn’t want to hear any complaints about being late for (Christian) school. If Doris is needed to help get Max in and out of the pickup and into the hospice, “I’ll write you a note.”

Mom Kristine is irritable, domineering and quick to guilt-trip her youngest kid about all that Doris isn’t doing for her brother. We get the impression that Kristine has been a walking, raging, judging panic-attack about this tragedy forever.

And Doris is over it. SO over it.

The first person she can let on that her mom is “a monster” and that all Doris wants at this stage is “a normal” teenage life is a friendly stranger (Harrelson) among the sign-waving protesters in front of Suncoast. They’re protesting Terri Schiavo’s husband’s efforts to let her die in that hospice, backing Schiavo’s parents’ legal struggle to prolong her vegetative life.

“Every life is precious,” Paul insists. But Paul isn’t some red-in-the-face ranter, just a wounded guy who felt called to come down and protest with people a lot more vehement than him.

Kristine’s constant “Will you THINK of your brother?” tirades at Doris tell us she’s only focused on one thing. The fact that she doesn’t flinch when she sees her teen daughter hanging with a 50ish loner from out of town shows us just how checked-out she’s become.

But Mom’s increasing devotion to Max has her insisting that she’ll keep crossing the protest lines (Schiavo was actually at a hospice named Woodside) and spend the night at Suncoast so he won’t be alone. A hurricane’s coming? So what? Doris will be “fine” alone.

“So you have to use a flashlight for a few hours.”

That’s how Doris stumbles into her first grasp at normality with her classmates, none of whom know her name. Their “hurricane party” plans have fallen through. Wait. My MOM won’t be home. Come to my house.

Thus pretty Doris finds herself tight with class bombshells Laci (Daniella Taylor), Britney (Ella Anderson), Megan (Ariel Martin) and dreamy Nate (Amarr of “American Housewife”). Drinking, “weed” and fake IDs are her initiation.

Chinn lets us judge these characters and decide they’re using Doris the way unpopular teens are always used in the movies. And then she upends those expectations.

Similarly, we can accuse, judge and convict Kristine and buy into the “monster” label, witness her theatrical insults to the staff and showdowns with a cop trying to protect a hospice from the bomb threats the crazies out front have been calling in.

“Everyone in there is about to die, anyway! Who’ll want to waste a bomb on that place?”

But there’s a human being inside that raging harpy.

Actress turned writer (TV’s “Florida Girls”) and director Chinn’s script flings Kristine about on the emotional roller coaster she’s living through, blind to the fact that Doris is trying to make her own decisions, some of which she’s sure to regret.

Both characters are fascinating to watch, with Linney pinning the “unlikable” needle, even as we start to see the person behind the fury.

Harrelson’s odd and seemingly sketchy character exists simply to personalize the Right to Die debate and maybe settle it, at least in the writer-director’s mind.

There’s a feeling that all of this isn’t quite coming together at many points in the film, that Chinn pulls her intellectual and emotional punches. But scenes set in a Christian school’s ethics class and at “the most important night of our lives” high school prom get the movie’s messages across.

And the relationships, messy as they are, leave us with the hope that things will work out, just not easily or tidily.

As “mixed bag” coming-of-age dramas go, “Suncoast” surprises with its heart and consistently punches above its emotional weight.

Rating: R, teen drug and alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Nico Parker, Laura Linney, Woody Harrelson,
Daniella Taylor, Amar, Ella Anderson, Ariel Martin and Pam Doughtery.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Laura Chinn. A Searchlight release on Hulu.

Running time: 1:49

More minions, new villainy, one big happy family?

This is one frenetic and sentimental edit job.

One good gag in this action packed trailer for the summer’s big animated romp.

The gang’s all back, save for the dead guy. They met Bill Murray’s asking price.

Annie, Ernie, Danny and Rudd-not-Rudnick and Patton and Kumail…

Atherton’s back to lay down the law.

Harold Ramis is still missed, but there’s money in this franchise.

March 22.

“Out of Darkness” is a foundational myth horror tale, a grisly and grim narrative about a time when early humanity could first rightly refer to itself as “humanity.”

In cinematic shorthand, this Scottish production is “Quest for Fire” meets “A Quiet Place” or “The Thing” — any movie where The Deadly Unknown is picking off cast members one by one.

And for a genre piece that hews to and takes a good shot at transcending “formula,” it’s quite good.

A distant blot of yellow light pierces the pitch blackness of 45,000 years ago. As Ben Fordsman’s camera closes in on it, we see it is a campire and we hear a child, in a prehistoric dialect (with subtitles) ask, “Tell me a story.”

This is an extended family band of six. The boy, Heron (Luna Mwezi) has reached his tweens. His mother, Ave (Iola Evans) is heavily pregnant with a sibling. His father, Adem (Chuku Modu) is the alpha male leading them into this wilderness. Geirr (Kit Young) might be Adem’s brother. The storyteller is “a stray” they took in — Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green).

And the elder, the skeptic they don’t listen to, is Odal (Arno Lüning).

“The danger in bringing light to a dark place,” Odal intones, is that “You find out what lives in the darkness.”

That’s prompted by an inhuman screech they hear, which makes all but Adem question why he brought them “across the great sea” to this “cursed” land where the only trees are firs, and damned few of them — a wind-blasted heath with no sign of “prey” game.

Until they find a mammoth, devoured right down to the tusk.

Andrew Cumming’s debut feature immerses us The Great Unknown, before understanding, before anything mysterious that couldn’t be passed down orally could be understood by the primitive people in their furs and superstitions.

A “demon” is out there? When it yanks someone away from that campfire, they will hunt it and they will turn on each other, essentially “inventing” the venal, paranoid side of human nature we know today.

The alpha couple and their son get priority treatment. The “stray” is odd girl-becoming-a-woman out.

Something happened to the migration of the herds where they came from. Perhaps the climate was changing in the midst of the last ice age. Adem chose to take them across the sea instead of “South,” seeking the herds that never came north.

Odal never lets him forget that.

When they are attacked, they respond in the range of ways we expect them to. They won’t be able to avoid the perilous and dark forests any more. Their priority won’t be finding food in this place seemingly berefit of animals of any sort.

The production design is state-of-the-art period-correct and the thesis the film was built on sound — new evidence keeps turning up about how much prehistoric humans migrated, and to where.

And the fear is — in this case — literally primal. Something’s in the dark, something that will kill us.

“We light a fire or we die in the dark.”

The frights may be standard issue, but that novel setting, the ways characters rise to or shrink from their greatest tests, and the grim nature of human life in this most fragile of ages make “Out of Darkness” a winner, right down to the minimalist pun of its title.

Rating: R, graphic violence, gruesome images

Cast: Chuku Modu, Kit Young, Safia Oakley-Green, Iola Evans, Luna Mwezi and Arno Lüning

Credits: Directed by Andrew Cumming, scripted by Ruth Greenberg. A Bleecker Street release.

Running time: 1:27

“The Tiger’s Apprentice” is an action adventure fantasy for the elementary school-age movie audience, a two-fisted martial arts fighting film taking place in the real world of modern San Francisco, and not the mythical China of “Kung Fu Panda” or “Mulan.”

It’s not on a par with either of those in entertainment value, fun or animation (Think “Pixar 1.5”). But there are lessons about having the courage to stand up to bullies and the discipline to be above seeking revenge on bullies-who-have-been-bullied, and compassion.

The Laurence Yep novel the film is based on is listed as being for “ages eight to 12.” So it’s not “Young Adult” fiction, despite having teen heroes.

At least it’ll save parents the trouble of trying to explain the Chinese zodiac, which the film amusingly notes is emblazoned on every placemat in almost every Chinese restaurant in North America.

Tom (Brandon Soo Ho) has been raised by his grandma (voiced by Kheng Hua Tan) from Hong Kong. They weren’t fleeing totalitarianism. Granny was trying to protect her late daughter’s baby from the threats posed by dragon demons and a witchy villain, Loo (Michelle Yeoh).

So he’s grown up in San Francisco, in a colorfully-decorated Painted Lady house covered in the Chinese charms Grandma makes and sells. That’s “weird” enough to get him bullied at school.

As you might guess, fighting back against a bully is how Tom discovers he’s “not normal.” The whole school discovers it. And his cracks about “Must have been that protein bar I had” don’t fool anybody, even the cute new foster child classmate Ra (Leah Lewis). They’ve already cell-phone-broadcast his “special powers.”

Grandma barely has time to explain “Our entire FAMILY is not normal” when A), her “old friend, Hu (Henry Golding) drops by to see that they’re OK and B) demonic dragons — whom we’ve seen attacking them when Tom was but a baby back in Hong Kong — show up, and because evil Loo has come for the Phoenix amulet for which Granny is “guardian.”

One Obi Wan Kenobi sacrifice later and Tom is wearing the necklace, and Hu — who turns out to be one of the “zodiacs” sworn to protect The Guardian, shape shifts into his Tiger avatar and spirits the kid to safety.

Tom discovers the “team” of protectors he must train with and depend on — Year of the “Rabbit,” “Pig,” “Dog,” Dragon,” “Rooster,” “Ox,” “Goat,” “Monkey,” “Snake,” “Horse,” Tiger and “Rat.”

Protectors? Those are “barely a petting zoo!”

But transforming into their animal form, each has powers that come in handy in a fracas.

“SNL’s” Bowen Yang, as a pizza-toting (New York subway joke) rat, stands out in the voice cast, as he must. Sherry Cola (“Joy Ride”) has fun voicing a short-tempered Chinese granny/dim sum cook. Yeoh is properly menacing as the villain, Golding properly no-nonsense — save when he’s caught in a debate with the rowdy rooster (Jo Koy).

Whatever, “Whiskers.” Back atcha “Drumstick!”

Tom must learn to “feel the Qi inside you” to be an effective guardian of the all-powerful Phoenix, use the dreams he has of his family and figures of myth, and come up with proper expletives for a family-friendly film.

“Holy shrimp-friend rice!”

There isn’t much to “The Tiger’s Apprentice,” but the fight sequences have a little pop, and I was struck by one lovely image — the fog-shrouded Golden Gate bridge at night, parked far in the background. The rest is a tad on the bland side in terms of visuals and content.

It’s not goofy, original or clever enough to dazzle and hold the attention of anyone over 12. But then, it’s not designed to.

Rating: PG

Cast: The voices of Michelle Yeoh, Henry Golding, Brandon Soo Ho, Lucy Liu, Sandra Oh, Jo Koy, Sherry Cola and Bowen Yang

Credits: Directed by Raman Hui, Yong Duk Jhun and Paul Watling, scripted by David Magee and Christopher L. Yost, based on the novel by Laurence Yep. A Paramount Animation/Paramount+ release.

Running time: 1:24

This one looks fun. And dammit, Henry Cavill deserves to be in something fun. For once.

Sam Rockwell, Samuel L., Katherine O’Hara and Bryan Cranston bring the PARTY with them, every time out. John Cena is always down to get down. Bryce Dallas Howard is just tickled to be here.

But Henry? He needs it. He’s about as uninhibited as I’d be under those circumstances, swapping screentime with DeBose and BG and His Excellency, Nile R.

They’re going fast, says the studio still drowning in “Barbie” money.

I’d hate for anybody to miss out.

March 1.

“Song of the South” is a patriotic and picaresque Vietnamese parable set just as the French occupation (“Protectorate,” they called it.) was winding down in Southeast Asia.

A newly-orphaned but timid and coddled ten year-old comes of age on a quest to find his long-absent father in the South of the country that the French considered part of French Indochina.

So it’s a “road picture,” taking us through 1940s Vietnam, a history lesson about the brawling factions simmering their way towards unity and a fight for independence, and a thriller with violent clashes, prison escapes and just a hint of magical realism.

Based on a 1957 novel “Đất rừng phương Nam” by the late Đoàn Giỏi, “South” is a sprawling but intimate vehicle for relating Vietnamese history, traditions and country and city life during those years. But it’s also a ripping good yarn, with action and suspense, humor and pathos.

Misbehaving An (Huynh Hao Khang) is yanked out of school by his teacher (Vin Ha Hua), but not because of the ruckus he was stirring. The teacher, who dashes down the street sharing secret hand signals with comrades, is taking the boy to his fleeing mother (Anh Hong).

The jig is up, the soldiers are coming for her. She just has time to grab a couple of things and fling a few bills around their apartment (clever touch) to slow her pursuers. They’re fleeing South.

“If you can’t learn from school, learn from life,” his teacher advises (in Vietnamese with English subtitles) on the way to the station. “Be a sheep if you must, a strong one. Never back down from any wolf.”

The “hero’s journey”has begun.

But there’s nothing heroic about An. He clings to mom, is mortally afraid of snakes and bugs and can’t swim, among other shortcomings. We figure all this out just as he loses his mother in a clash at a bridge checkpoint.

An is on his own, with the chap who picked mom’s pocket (Tuan Tran) the only person who might take him in.

An has to be dragged along by this fellow, who refers to himself as “Ut the Boss.” The boy will learn and resist learning along the way to find the kid’s real father many days journey south.

An will fall in with a healer/chiropractor/busker (Tiến Luật) and his age-appropriate-for-a-crush daughter (Bui Ly Bao Ngoc) and a mudskippers fisherboy in the Mekong Delta. An will drunkenly get caught up in a daring raid to free the hairy and homocidal folk hero/freedom fighter Võ Tòng (Mai Tai Phen).

With or without finding his father, a boy’s sure to come of age after going through all that.

The ambushes and riots that lead to massacres and French-backed executions are furious and visceral, with a little wirework/stuntwork assisting freedom-fighting archers and knife-throwers as they pop up and hurtle down upon their oppressors.

We get a hint of how divided Vietnam was, and not just via the collaboraters who play a role in the plot, propping up French control.

And we see a lot of this picturesque land of rivers and rice paddies, jungles and towns, not all of it torn by war.

Our little leading man is game and believable in the part. Tuan Tran, as an An Giang Province artful dodger, is the scene-and-movie-stealing comic relief.

As the film is titled “Part 1” of this life journey, director Quang Dung Nguyen can be forgiven for not being able to manage a graceful finale. And a lot of the tropes of the genre are a tad too on-the-nose to surprise Western audiences.

But “Song of the South” makes a pretty travelogue, a poetic foundation myth (No sign of “Uncle Ho.” Yet.), a nicely-detailed period piece and a thoroughly entertaining saga.

Rating: TV-14, lots of violence

Cast:Huynh Hao Khang, Anh Hong, Tuan Tran, Vi Van Hua, Tiến Luật, Bui Ly Bao Ngoc, Bang Di and Mai Tai Phen

Credits: Directed by Quang Dung Nguyen, scripted by Tran Khanh Hoang, based on the novel by Đoàn Giỏi. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:50

If you like to watch older films, sometimes you’ve got to bend the parameters of what “classic” means. Because if you’ve ever walked up on a Chevy Nova at a vintage car show, you know — some things are “Classics” and others are just plain old.

“The Fortune” pretty much put an end to Hollywood’s fascination with tales told from the ’20s and early ’30s. “Bonnie and Clyde” kicked off this “Gatsby” era fad. “The Sting” and “Paper Moon” represented its peak. And this Mike Nichols “comedy” and Peter Bogdanovich’s musical “At Long Last Love” drove stakes through its heart.

Nichols’ former comedy partner, Elaine May, had starred in, written and directed “A New Leaf” a couple of years before. Why not get Jack Nicholson‘s old acting class pal, actress turned writer Carole Eastman (“Five Easy Pieces,” “The Shooting”) to knock out another variation on that “marry for money and murder her” “comedy?”

The ’70s were nostalgic that way.

Jack and his Hollywood running mate Warren Beatty would star, and Stockard Channing would play the rich, high-strung and dizzy “victim,” whose mood swings would give the Broadway baby a chance to storm about and sing. Beatty sings, too. Imagine that.

Nichols, who’d helped found the Second City comedy troupe and taken New York by storm as half of the Nichols & May comedy act, already had “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” “The Graduate” and “Catch-22” on his resume. He’d make “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “Working Girl” and “The Birdcage” in his later years.

I once sat a few rows over from him and May in the back of the theater in a theatrical out-of-town tryouts city in the South as they pondered a stage dramedy being rehearsed and performed, looking for ways it could be “fixed.” They provided that service a lot, because nobody knew comedy better.

But “The Fortune,” while light and kind of antic, barely has a laugh in it. Brisk and occasionally loud, the script never quite hits the funnybone and the players can’t compensate for that.

Where it went wrong, I think, is in the very conceit that “sells” it. It’s a Mann Act comedy.

The joke is that because transporting (women, at the time the act was written) “across state lines for immoral purposes,” aka prostitution or sexual reasons was illegal (ask Chuck Berry, Jeffrey Epstein or Matt Gaetz about that), “the lengths some people would go to” in order to run off with a woman might be funny.

It turns out, it isn’t. In our human-trafficking/child-trafficking obsessed era, nobody would have dared to make a comedy out of this.

All that follows happens shortly after the Mann Act was passed, and just after Lindbergh’s “lucky” flight across the Atlantic.

Beatty plays Nicky Wilson, a married man who can’t get a divorce and be with his beloved, Freddie (Channing). So he gets lowlife embezzler Oscar Dix (Nicholson) to join him and her as they flee “back east” for “out west.” Oscar will marry Freddie as a cover story and all three will start over in the Land of Opportunity — California.

Oscar seems like an agreeable oaf in all this. But he knows that Freddie’s real name is F.Q. Bigard, “Fredrika Quintessa Bigard.” And all the bullying and “Do you wanna go to jail or do you wanna go to California” bluster from mustachioed Nicky can’t throw dim-Oscar off the scent. This broad comes from money.

She may wail how “daddy” has disowned her by this rash act. But Oscar turns on the charm because Oscar doesn’t trust Nicky, and not just because of the mustache.

“You know a man of means and a mean man oftens means the same?”

They travel by Ford Trimotor plane, train and automobile to sundrenched SoCal. And that’s where things really go wrong. Because bitter Nicky is losing faith, and Oscar finally gets the “money” admission out of him. With Nicky’s divorce never quite coming through and Oscar suddenly reluctant to get out of this arranged marriage, can these two dolts go through with what they back into as a solution — murdering Freddie, faking her suicide, to collect the surviving spouse inheritance?

The few chances “The Fortune” has to be madcap is in the botched efforts to do away with the annoying but undeserving-of-this Freddie. She can’t handle her booze, so that’s how they’ll make her “manageable” so that they can pull off her untimely demise.

Nicky might be the mastermind, but he’s no Einstein. And Oscar? He’s a wild-haired, impulsive liability. Hilarity ensues, except it never quite does.